Andrew McCarthy: Obama's Nuclear Stance Will 'Turn Americans Off'

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy says President Barack Obama's bombshell revelation in Berlin that America's nuclear arsenal should be dramatically reduced was a mistake and "may turn a lot of Americans off."

"It’s really bad for an American president to attack American policy overseas," McCarthy, who was former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

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"To go over to Germany and attack our policies is really something that ought to turn a lot of Americans off. It certainly offends me. I hope I wouldn't like it if a Republican president did it or a conservative president did it, although I can't imagine that happening."

McCarthy, author of the bestselling book "Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy," also believes the president's vow to decrease nuclear arms is hypocritical.

"To have him use that forum to attack American policy when in point of fact, if he really felt that strongly about [the Guantanamo Bay prison], he could close it tomorrow," McCarthy said.

"He'd have to repatriate all the terrorists who are in it and the reason he's having such a problem with it is the world turns out to be much more complicated than candidate Barack Obama said it was.

"It turns out there are a lot of bad people in the world who want to mass murder Americans who can't be tried in civilian court under due process standards because a lot of what we know about them comes from intelligence that can't be used in court."

McCarthy, who prosecuted the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, also said he is waiting with interest to watch a new documentary that claims the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 was possibly caused by a missile.

While the National Transportation Safety Board ruled that the explosion was caused by an electrical short circuit, investigators who worked on the probe say in the documentary that there was evidence of "an external explosion" they were not allowed to talk about.

McCarthy said he is withholding final judgment on the cause until he sees the documentary, to be aired on the EPIX television network, but is so far siding with the official explanation.

"I don’t see a good reason for our government to have covered up the truth if the truth was something other than what the official investigation uncovered. So I'm torn about this like everybody else is," he said.

"I'm very curious to see the documentary, but I am backed up by the fact that [Assistant FBI Director] Jim Kallstrom, who I think very highly of, is pretty adamant on the fact that this was not a missile attack."

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy says President Barack Obama's bombshell revelation in Berlin that America's nuclear arsenal should be dramatically reduced was a mistake and may turn a lot of Americans off.